Shooter Jerad Miller Was an Unemployed Convicted Felon: Where Did He Get His Expensive Weapons From?

Editor’s note: A comment from an individual who claimed to have been at Bundy Ranch and who saw Miller there said the above photo is not him. It is, however, identified as him by Aljazeera:

“Melissa Chan reported from the ranch of the suspected killers in April and spoke to one of the shooters,” an awkwardly worded caption reads.

Overlooked in the emerging background story on shooter Jerad Miller is how he managed to purchase firearms. Miller was a convicted felon, so legally purchasing the firearms he allegedly used in last weekend’s rampage is out of the question.

“It is illegal for a person who has been convicted of a felony then to possess a firearm in Nevada. Penalties include prison and high fines. People who have been convicted of a felony may not possess a firearm in Nevada unless they are granted an official pardon,” states the Las Vegas Defense Group.

Dylan Scott, writing for Talking Points Memo, notes law enforcement in Nevada has yet to determine how Miller and his wife received firearms.

“But in the weeks leading up to the attack, Jerad Miller posted multiple times on Facebook that he was looking for a gun and asked for help obtaining one,” Scott writes.

Amanda Miller, however, did not have a criminal record and it was legally permissible for her to purchase firearms. Police in Nevada have yet to release any information indicating if she in fact bought the firearms allegedly used in the attack.

Mother Jones, formerly edited by anti-Second Amendment zealot Michael Moore, writes in a screed implicating Infowars.com in the shooting that Miller suffered from “decaying teeth, lack of health insurance, and inability to find work,” in other words the supposed rightwing extremist likely did not have the funds available to buy a shotgun, handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Moreover, photos of Miller at the Bundy ranch show him toting an AK-47, the very weapon he pined for on his Facebook page. He is outfitted in crisp new camos and a bulletproof vest.

AK-47 semiautomatic rifles are priced between $450 and $3,500, depending on manufacture origin and modifications. The price of AK-47 ammo, the 7.62×39, while relatively inexpensive, routinely costs over $200 for a thousand rounds bought in bulk.

A bulletproof vest can cost hundreds of dollars. The question is: how did an unemployed felon manage to buy this equipment?

TPM would have us believe a patron contacted on Facebook may have provided the funds necessary. While this may in fact be true, it does stretch credulity. In fact, this scenario is reminiscent of the behavior of the FBI agents during patsy frame-ups on terror charges.

Adding to the possibility that Miller was handled by the FBI is the fact he was ejected from the Bundy ranch. Ammon Bundy, the son of Cliven Bundy, said Jerad and Amanda Miller were told to leave the ranch. He said the couple were “very radical” and did not “align themselves” with the protest’s main issues.